Our local (BBC)

The protagonist of this article is a crow that visits our terrace (roof garden) every day. My kids love animals, to know it so much that they noticed that this crow had a routine when it visits our terrace.

One day the class AVES crow was drawing a lot of attention from us by increasing its decibel level. When we took notice of its high cawing, we realized that half of its beak was missing or broken. After drawing our attention, it flew away. Probably it thought when you meet friends you share your highs and lows in life, to feel lighter. So after conveying its broken beak status to us, it flew away.

Officially we crowned it with the title - The Broken Beak Crow (BBC). When we started calling it BBC. It started to like the name we had given, sometimes it used to patiently give us poses for our photo shoot.

Now back to the story; with the new broken beak status, it could not drink water directly from the tap or bowl. So it waited for us to complete watering the plants, and drink the excess water, that was on the floor. Most of the days we used to intentionally leave excess water on the floor for BBC to drink. Ok, what we saw was BBC adapting itself to its new world with a half-broken beak.

It was a bright hot day, my kids called me out to the terrace with an SOS. And what we saw, astonished us to the core. As our BBC could not eat directly (by pecking), it got help from a fellow crow.

How, like this;

The friend crow got food and stored it in its throat and called our BBC to come near. BBC promptly went closer, the friend opened its throat. BBC put its half-broken beak into its Friend’s throat and ate the food.

We were watching in disbelief. But realized that BBC and its friend were behaving in their natural way of helping each other.

The intent of writing this was not to compare this humane gesture of crows, with humans and paint how human beings have to learn to love each other. But to share with the world that crows like Humans also help each other. Period!